For me to be invested makes sense, I am grappling with severe obesity in middle age.
That so many others who are not obese appear to have such investment makes very little at all.
Everyone. Assuming adds nothing except confusion and error.
No, you misunderstood. You have a lot invested in this particular guy being totally 100% right about his theory. You obviously have a lot invested in finding the secret to weight loss in general, but you are really driven to prove him right. Look at the parts I quoted in my previous post. You fabricated all of that. And you’re shaking your finger at everyone else for making assumptions?
You bet! But only to the extent that it is - If his theory is wrong, it’s worse than useless to me and my investment vanishes. (Of course it’s not uncommon for some people to persist in trying to show that something which has been proved to be wrong is right, but that sort of behavior mystifies me, because things which are wrong, or don’t work, or aren’t true, aren’t helpful or useful. My interest lies with things that are. If I managed to convince every single person I ever spoke to that Taubes was right even if he wasn’t, it would provide me nothing of any value whatsoever.)
Certainly it might be wrong, but thus far there’s been precious little to suggest that it is, nor to suggest that Taubes is being in any respect dishonest.
No, I’m driven to prevent others from going unchallenged when they assert that he’s wrong (or, using the colorful - and telling - language that’s been brought to bear, that’s it’s’ “garbage” or that Taubes is a “clown”) and doing so on what is at best, thin, incomplete and unexamined “evidence” that he’s wrong, and that describes what’s been offered.
And I’ve previously explained exactly why I’m so driven: because I don’t want to let anymore grounless dismissals of good information go unchallenged when I know that there are so many people following this thread for whom the answers matter. I don’t want them to torture themselves and dismiss Taubes and the possibility that they could find relief from their struggles because a few people have an agenda that to this very moment remains murky, except that it includes dismissing Taubes’ theories.
Honestly, the amount of “I haven’t read it, but I read half of this critique…” or “I’ve read it and I thought it was crap and so did this guy” or “I’ve read half and I read half this review” that is being served up as solid evidence of Taubes’ untrustworthiness and error, and continues to be held on to in the face of extensive and detailed contrary information, is remarkable. It seems that there’s a great deal of interest in trashing him, and me, but very little interest in making any serious effort to back it up or follow up. Very disappointing, really. This is the Dope. I always expect and hope for better.
Anyway, questoning him is good. Necessary. Important. Pushing the idea, or even suggesting, that the questions themselves are in fact answers and that those “answers” prove anything is bad.
I “fabricated” nothing. I do not “fabricate”, nor do I prevaricate, deceive or in any other respect whatsoever lie, and I take issue with your saying that I have.
What I did was parse the facts for the benefit of those who find some distinctions challenging to recognize, in this case the distinction between being taken out of context and being placed within a context. Not only as to where the responsibility lies if either or both have in fact occurred, but much more importantly: the distinction between what the two concepts even mean to begin with.
Stoid, I think that when a number of experts quoted feel that their views were truncated so much as to twist their meaning, that’s a good cause for suspicion of the author. These are respected scientists and there’s no reason to assume they are shills of the Carbohydrate Cartel.
You’ve chosen to buy his defense - fine. But don’t try to tell me it’s an obvious conclusion.
There has been precious little that has influenced *you *- there has been quite a bit of evidence offered up. Clearly you have come to your own unshakable conclusion - which is fine if that’s how you feel - but, as CarnalK says, it’s quite dishonest to insist that it’s the only conclusion or the obvious conclusion. Ask yourself this - is there anything *another *poster could say or post that would make you doubt Taubes and his theory? Because if there isn’t, what you have isn’t a scientific theory, it’s an article of faith that you’ve chosen to accept as gospel.
On another note, I’ve never understood why so many people are so quick to accept these ‘underdog’ theories that go against any prevailing wisdom. Sure, sometimes those things are eventually proven right, but more often they turn out to be just as ridiculous as they sound. The fact that a certain theory is going against the grain does not prove that it is sound, nor that there is some sinister conspiracy working to keep it down. Is it that you feel like you are sticking it to the man or something?
Dude…if I had a nickel…
This helps me put a finger on what bothers me about Taubes’ approach:
TAUBES: You could twist that question, which I’m going to, and ask whether journalists have an obligation to assure that everyone cited in an article agrees with the over-riding thesis.
For many people, the default approach when they hear the word “journalist” is to equate it with “reporter.” In other words, someone who gathers facts related to a story and faithfully reports both sides.
That’s not always what a journalist is, though, and Taubes shows that in his quote. Reporters shouldn’t approach a story with a thesis – they should simply gather and report facts, regardless of how they can be interpreted. An editorial writer or journalist, on the other hand, is attempting to convince others that their interpretation of the facts is the correct one. They have no obligation to provide facts that run counter to their opinion. Michael Moore and Fox News are good examples.
Taubes’ quote raises a point – I wonder if he discussed his over-riding thesis with Fumento and others when he was interviewing them. Again, he’d have no reason to do so, but it would at least explain why some are so frustrated and angry at the way their quotes and research were used.
What I’m saying is, Taubes may be a brilliant researcher and scientific writer, but at heart he’s trying to prove his thesis. By definition, that means he’s not objective; he has a vested interest in his theory being correct. He may very well be correct, for all I know – but until he IS proven correct, he’s in the same category as Michael Moore and the pundits at Fox News.
This morning I happened to catch a short article by Taubes on Slate.com:
http://hive.slate.com/hive/time-to-trim/article/its-not-about-the-calories
It seems like the point he is leaving out is that weight loss is difficult and very few people are successful at it. That’s going to be true no matter what weight loss method you choose.
He cites a low calories diet study http://www.annals.org/content/147/1/41.abstract and concludes"the results have been depressingly predictable. The subjects experience modest weight loss (maybe nine or 10 pounds in the first six months), and then they gain the weight right back. " It’s hard to see how any conclusion could be drawn from this other than that the diet was successful (losing 9 or 10 pounds in 6 months is significant) and the dieter stopped following it. If you choose to watch calories, but then overeat, your weight loss will fail.
He next cites a study of low fat diet study involving “nearly 50,000 mostly overweight or obese women” http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/295/1/39.full.pdf+html?sid=766cc0e1-a2e1-4b56-b03e-6d7bbc4fa5ba In the study, the dieters were instructed to eat a low-fat diet, rich in fruits, vegetables, and fiber over a period of 7 years. A the conclusion of the 7 years of being instructed to be on the diet, the average person in the trial lost an average of one pound. Common sense would indicate that any large scale study of the overweight or obsese over a long period of time will show a very large failue rate. Some will succeed, but most will fail. Of course, from this study, Taubes concludes, it “suggests that getting people to increase their consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains is not the way to induce weight loss.”
He next cites a report on Physical Acitivity and the Public Health, focusing on Obesity, Gaining, and Losing Weight. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/116/9/1081 Taubes takes this paragraph from the study:
“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively
high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain
weight over time, compared with those who have low
energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis
are not particularly compelling (57), but some observational
data indicate that men who report at least 45–60 min of
activity on most days gain less weight than less active men
(16). Furthermore, the specific types and amounts of
activity required to prevent weight gain in the majority of
people have not been well established using prospective
study designs, and it is clear that they cannot be precisely
set without considering individual factors such as energy
intake and genetics. Thus, currently it is best to assume that
the specific amount of physical activity that will help
prevent unhealthy weight gain is a function that differs from
individual to individual, but that in general more activity
increases the probability of success (62).”
Taubes turns the study into : “As they put it, the data supporting the idea that increasing our energy expenditure will lead to weight loss—or even a slowing of weight gain—“are not particularly compelling.”” Taubes ignores the recommendation of the study that it can be assumed more activity increases the probability of the prevention of unhealthy weight gain and concludes, “Making it possible for children to enjoy the benefits of physical activity is a wonderful thing, but expecting that they’ll lose weight by doing so is naive.”
It seems like his reasoning for why conventional diet methods fail is off. Conventional diets fail because most diets fail. It’s not because those methods don’t work. Coming up with a new diet method centered around fat accumulation in the body and hormone insulin is not going to change this. The diet may work great if followed. And like every other diet, most people will fail at it.
If you read the study, you can see it’s also restricted to post-menopausal women, and the thesis they were testing was whether a low-fat diet causes weight gain, which some people do suggest. The conclusion is it doesn’t.
Also, from the study:
Yeah, I don’t see how anyone could see that study’s context and conclusion, compare it to Taubes’ reporting of it, and come away with anything other than the impression that Taubes is being quite deceptive.
I think that you are underestimating Stoid.
Except that’s not really what happened, CarnalK, as I’ve explained a couple of times and perhaps you genuinely do not get the distinction. But I assure you it’s very real. The experts did not say that their views were twisted to change their meaning, they were concerned that people would INSERT MEANINGS (ie.,make assumptions!) because their VIEWS WERE INCLUDED as part of an article that was not, taken as a whole, something they agreed with.
If you want to make the argument that by using their (true) views and data and research and conclusions as part of the article, there is a legitimate concern about the conclusions that a reader might draw, including that a reader might ASSUME that a given researcher agrees with EVERYTHING that is being said, and therefore Taubes had an obligation to do something to mitigate that…great. Make THAT argument, because THAT argument works with the facts.
But you can’t keep saying that the fact is that anyone ever said that Taubes misstated, misrepresented, distorted, or otherwise altered anything so that the actual meaning of the researchers was lost, because that is factually untrue.
And if that seems to you a distinction without a difference, I assure you it is not: In the first scenario (readers might assume because Dr. Reaven’s work was referenced that Reaven agrees with everything Taubes has said), Taubes has done nothing dishonest or nefarious to undermine the faith we might have in his reportage, even if we end up arguing about his duty to mitigate potential assumptions.
In the second scenario, where he actually alters, “truncates” or in some other fashion is directly responsible for actually changing the meaning of what the researchers’ have said, that’s a slamdunk: wrong. Period. And raises legitimate concern about his reportage in general.
I only have read the first response, Carnal’s which I have just responded to. I see there is quite a bit more,but I am on a clock. I will be back later to read and respond.
My impression is that he was reporting something they said but removed important (to the researchers) caveats.
Anyways, even given your more charitable interpretation that he is merely shirking his duty to prevent wrong assumptions, when added to the way he misrepresents that JAMA/WHI study in his Slate article, I get more and more of a propagandist feel off of Taubes.
Personally, I think you should just portmanteau it into “The Carbtel.”
Because it’s a magic bullet that explains everything while placing no responsibility on them for their own health. You don’t need to change what you eat, how you eat it, or how you think about food.
I can’t wait to see your response to the example of Taubes completely misrepresenting the results of the study that **Richie Incognito **cited.
She’ll just poo-poo it, like she does with everything else in this thread.
But that’s exactly what we are saying, and the fact that the quoted researchers feel misrepresented supports that idea. Take the study cited upthread, Taubes misrepresented and distorted the purpose of that study and the results of it in order to support his thesis. The actual meaning of the study is wholly irrelevant to his work, but because he can find a couple sentences that appear to be supporting what he is saying he will use it.
So you have a situation where someone’s work has a paragraph or a page to illustrate an idea, Taubes quotes 4 consecutive words, and when the original author says, “No, you’re taking me out of context and not relating the entire concept” you point your finger and yell “nanny nanny boo boo - you can’t take it back because you said it!!” and claim that it’s not misrepresentation. It is not “factually untrue” that he does that, or else you have no clue what facts are and are throwing that word around like you know what it means.
Yes, truncating the text of someone abruptly can change the meaning of what is being quoted. Like if I said that “Stoid, you are generally a smart person but in this one case you’re clearly in over your head,” and you quoted “Stoid, you are generally a smart person” to support your theory that everyone loves and respects your intellectual prowess, slamdunk: wrong.
Watch her actually quote that 
Obama: I’m very happy to have been elected president, and I intend to serve the people of this country to the full extent of my ability.
Glenn Beck: In a shocking admission today, newly elected president Obama blatantly admitted that he intends to use people as a food source. Let me cue up the video ::shows a clip of Obama’s speech “I intend to serve the people of this country.”:: Now I have to ask you, who does he intend to feed OUR CHILDREN to? George Soros? A Muslim extremist group? We knew it’d be bad folks, but not this bad.